Kelly McParland: Where Obama went wrong

Where Obama went wrong

Barack Obama goes into this week’s Democratic National Convention neck and neck with Mitt Romney in the race for the U.S. presidency, a competition that appears likely to be settled based on which candidate voters decide is the least worst. The euphoria that developed around Obama in the 2008 election is long gone; it may be surprising that he’s even still in the race at all, albeit against a rival about whom Republicans are similarly unenthused.

Here’s an assessment of Obama’s position and what went wrong with his first four years:

1. He grossly oversold himself. No one could have delivered on the expectations that Obama’s campaign saddled him with by the time of the 2008 vote. Perhaps he needn’t shoulder all the blame – if voters insist on treating you like a messiah, are you supposed to talk them out of it? Even the Nobel committee was caught up in it, awarding him a peace prize just for existing. But he actively fed the beast, pledging a degree of change that was simply unachievable, particularly his vow to change the way Washington does business. Nothing short of an invasion of Huns could separate Washington away from its armies of lobbyists, special interests, financiers, ego-gratifiers and union/corporate enablers. And you can’t change Congress unless it wants to change, which it doesn’t. He was either foolish in thinking he could, or irresponsible in promising it anyway.

2. He landed splat in the midst of the worst economic disaster since 1929. Even if his campaign promises had been more reasonable, he wasn’t going to get a chance to act on them while the economy was collapsing around him. The auto industry, Wall Street, the housing collapse – it was an enormous mess and anyone who suggests in retrospect there was some obvious solution is kidding himself. Even though the collapse was a decade in the making, voters gave him less than two years to fix it before impatiently filling Congress with Tea party members dedicated to ensuring failure through obstruction.

3. He made some big mistakes. Whether or not it was a good idea to pour stimulus money into the economy is debatable, but Obama erred big-time in letting Democrats in Congress waste much of it on vanity projects and partisan crusades. He similarly let slip an opportunity in the early days of his administration to engage Republicans in a badly needed overhaul of the tax system, and delegated too much power to congressional Democrats in crafting his health-care plan, turning it into a partisan slugfest that alienated Republicans when he badly needed them. In the end the bill was passed without Republican support, leaving many Americans to feel it was a flawed plan being imposed on them to burnish the president’s legacy.

4. Once elected he quit campaigning. The fiery speeches, the soaring rhetoric, the eloquent appeals for hope and change disappeared, as did Obama for surprising stretches. Author Jodi Kantor reports in The Obamas that the president dislikes the phoney backslapping and faked camaraderie of Washington, the schmoozing and ego- gratification sessions, and spends much time alone with his thoughts, working out plans in his office within the White House residence. Members of Congress only hear from him when he wants something, and he spends his private time with a small group of non-political friends. That’s not the way to get things done in a political system that divides power between president and Congress, and awards Congress – and many indovduals within it – enormous powers to frustrate, disrupt and obstruct.

5. After running as a consensus-builder, he seemed to default to the left once he came under pressure. He dismissed the Keystone pipeline project even though the benefits to the U.S. were obvious, as a sop to the upset environmental lobby. He changed position on same-sex marriage without having adequately prepared the ground. (It didn’t help that his vice-president prematurely blurted out the plan out on a Sunday TV show, forcing a week of desperate spinning by an unprepared White House). The Democratic convention schedule may please Democrats hot on unions, abortion rights, carbon taxes and Hollywood (Mary J. Blige! Will.I.Am!), but it likely won’t reassure those who suspected Obama was always more of an ivory tower liberal than he let on, his sympathies more with the groups that like to spend the money than with those who struggle to produce it.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.